An absolute genius

Today we spent a lot of time experiencing the absolute genius of Antoni Gaudi. While yesterday’s visit to the Sagrada Familia was a highlight he also worked on a number of other buildings and locations around Barcelona.

First stop was a visit to Guell Park about 20 mins from the centre of town. This was originally the vision of Eusebi Guell who wanted to construct a high end housing estate at the end of the 1800s. The site was on the side of a hill overlooking the city and out to the Mediterranean. He engaged Gaudi to help design the streets, public areas, and some of the administrative buildings. In the end the project failed because it was seen to be too far away from the centre of town for the high end clients Mr Guell was aiming for and he wanted to put too many restrictions on the houses people could build in his estate. In the end only two houses were built out of a possible 60, one is still privately owned and the other is a museum.

Now Guell Park is a public park and, thanks to Gaudi, a tourist attraction. He designed viaducts so people could walk under cover in the hot sun or the rain, the public areas included an area with one long bench for people to sit and talk while looking out over the city. The bench is covered in Gaudi’s signature broken tiles, plates, and other ceramics making Gaudi one of the first to recycle building materials. The bench has waves in it to encourage people to face each other when they talk. The water drains into a reservoir and is reused across the park. There are so many little things he thought of that make this park sensational. See the photos.

After Guell Park we went to the old town of Barcelona - well before Gaudi’s time but we will come back to him. This area has a few medieval buildings but most were rebuilt for the first Expo in 1889 when they wanted to show off a progressive and modern city.

The Basilica of Barcelona is in this area plus a few old palaces that do date back to the 14th and 15th centuries. Barcelona is the capital of the autonomous region of Catalonia and some locals would like to separate from Spain - one of the reasons for this was that the state of Catalonia was founded in the 9th century whereas Spain was founded in the 15th century.

When the Basilica was started in 1292 and took about 150 years to build. Once done the locals were not allowed to access it as it was reserved for the royals and the wealthy so they went and started building their own church in 1325 which only took 50 years to build.

After looking around for a bit we headed back to the newer end of town as we were going to another building by Mr Gaudi.

Casa Batllo was a remodelled existing building with Gaudi getting involved in 1904 and it being finished in 1912. This building is on the main street of Barcelona and is a huge tourist attraction. The patron saint of Barcelona is St George so the building is meant to represent a dragon with the sword of St George as the cross.

It is very well designed. Small touches like the use of sky lights to light lower floors, coloured tiles that get darker as you get higher, windows that are bigger on lower floors, clever use of cross ventilation and much more.

Gaudi was a very religious man so any money he earned from private commissions he donated to the Sagrada Familia project as he wanted that to succeed and be his legacy.

Today marks the last day of our first tour. We have been going for 4 weeks and visited Morocco, Spain, and Portugal - it has been excellent. We now have a much better understanding of the history and links between the three countries. History we just don’t have in Australia.

Tomorrow morning we are on the 8.19am high speed train to Lyon where we start the next phase of our trip.Read more